Here’s a conversation with my bolded alter-ego offering a little update because it has been a long few weeks. Enjoy.
Oh, hello. I didn’t see you there.
Where have you been!?
That’s aggressive. Life has been very busy, of late.
Busy? With what?
Let’s see. The start of the fall semester caught me not quite prepared, which has led to a mad scramble just to keep up. I am also preparing a course that I am excited to teach in the spring, but since the syllabus needs to be approved ahead of the start of enrollment that has been one more thing on my plate. Oh, and I’ve been working on my book.
You’re writing a book?
Yes, but you knew that already. It has come up on this blog from time to time.
Look at Mr. Fancy.
Dr. Fancy, actually.
Fine, Doctor Fancy. Is the book done?
On my end, pretty much! I returned the final proofs and index to my production editor at the University of Michigan Press this week.
So when can I buy it?
March 2023, assuming everything goes smoothly from here.
That’s a long time from now.
Not really, if you think about it. I have been working on this project continuously in one form or another for about ten years. I started my dissertation project in 2011, graduated with my degree in 2017, and then started revising the book while patching together work after that. Put another way, this project has been with me through employment at five schools, the election of three US presidents, and one global pandemic. I’m hoping that it comes out before a second pandemic. Besides, it is not unheard of for the queue to be much longer than six months for an article to come out after being accepted.
Another question. This is an academic book, so it probably costs eleven thousand dollars and the soul of my firstborn child.
Hey. That is not only not a question, but it is also only a fair characterization for some presses.
Answer my implied question. How much?
I actually have a very exciting update on that, but I’m going to hold off until closer to publication date, lest you get too excited and rush to the site only to find a dead link.
Tease.
Absolutely. But I assure you that in due time I’ll share all of the details, including the cover design and how and when to get the book.
That sounds like a threat.
Think of it as a promise.
Fine. So what next? Are you finally going to take a break? I hear you’re really bad at that.
Well, there’s still the semester—
[At about this point another round of grading lands on me in a cartoonish explosion of paper]
—and that syllabus, and I’ve fallen away from baking as often as I’d like because there are just too many things going on. I also have several other writing projects that are overdue and I’m toying with submitting an abstract for a conference with a deadline in early October. And then there are the two or three other books for which I am in the early stages of researching. I would also like to get back to writing more frequently in this space.
That’s a lot.
It is, and I need to remember that none of these projects are going to be done overnight. I just need to start with the work that is overdue and chip away at the rest by increments. Frankly, I am looking forward to both. The one because it will relieve another source of stress, the other because it will require some amount of time reading for my various projects without an imminent deadline by which it will have to be done. I haven’t had enough time for that reading recently.
And you’re going to sleep, too, right?
Absolutely. I’ve got that on my to-do list somewhere.
Noodlings 